Monday, September 24, 2007

EBOOK: Overclocked by Cory Doctorow

I have blogged about Cory Doctorow before, and was delighted to find his latest short story collection in print recently. It was a worthy buy. If you want to check it out, he has done his usual e-release on-line under a Creative Commons license, and you can download it in a variety of formats thanks to ManyBooks.net.

I found myself disagreeing with many of the Amazon.com reviews. I found the generally panned "I, Row-Boat" to be a charming and original idea, reminiscent of "Someone Comes to Town. Someone Leaves Town." It took me awhile to catch on to the concept of the concept of how humans work in the tale (and I do have a few questions, such as propagation of the species under such a model, which go unanswered). But I loved the idea that inanimate objects could develop consciousness, and there were two lines in particular (among them, the final of the story) that made it completely work for me.

Most of the Amazon reviewers in contrast loved "After the Siege" and I confess, I didn't get it. At all. The writing was vivid and lovely, but the concept never quite gelled in my mind, and I just didn't get it. Can't win 'em all, I guess :)

Anyway, it's a great little collection. If you do enjoy it, I humbly suggest you pick up the print version and show authors like this that Commons distribution works.